About
The Industry Environments Program, part of CSIRO’s Environment Research Unit, is at the forefront of scientific efforts to address Australia’s most pressing waste and chemical challenges. Our multidisciplinary approach integrates advanced technologies across chemistry, microbiology, molecular biology, environmental science, and synthetic biology.
Vision
To lead innovation and mitigation efforts in managing Australia’s chemicals and waste, securing a sustainable future. We aim to deliver targeted impact through specialised groups, foster excellence across unique sites, and ensure our operations are interoperable, deployable, efficient, and collaborative.
Mission
To be Australia’s premier team for addressing challenges and developing solutions in waste management, pollution control, and recycling.
The Industry Environments Program, consists of the three Groups each with three Teams:
Contaminants & Mitigation Group
Detection & Profiling Team
We develop and use innovative tools and technologies for detection, profiling and assessment of contaminants of concern for emergency response, targeted management options and protection of human and environmental health.
Fate & Transport Team
We undertake research to detect chemicals of concern in soil-surface water-groundwater systems and develop novel transport and (bio) geochemical processes models to predict contaminant movement, impacts on soil and water quality and target management options.
Remediation Technologies Team
We undertake research to develop and safeguard innovative technologies & solutions for the remediation of contaminated sites, wastes & infrastructure.
Prime Activities
Develops innovative detection, modelling and technologies to prioritise contaminants of concern, assess and predict environmental risks & target solutions ensuring sustainable industries, prevent contamination legacies, and protection of human and environmental health.
Healthy Communities Group
EcoSurveillance Systems Team – Develops systems to detect and quantify risks of adverse effects of contaminants and pathogens to communities and ecosystems.
Green Resource Recovery Team – Develops pathways to recover metal resources and reduce environment footprint from resource extraction and consumption.
Waste Beneficiation & Storage Team – Develops environmentally safe approaches for storage and repurposing of waste streams to minimise pollution and increase the beneficial reuse and circularity of resources.
Prime Activities
Develops threat surveillance and risk forecasting systems to protect Australian communities from acute and chronic shocks, reduce harmful wastes derived from consumption and develop sovereign sustainability options in green resource recovery and for Australia’s problematic wastes.
Toward BioSustainability Group
Insects as Engineers Team
Recent advances in synthetic biology enable us to manipulate insect genomes and microbiomes with unprecedented precision and sophistication. Developing genomic and other omic resources will enable waste processing, bioproduction and ecosystem engineering applications.
BioProduction Team
The development and application of novel bioproduction and multiomic analysis capabilities to greatly reduce the time, financial, and environmental costs of delivering bio-based products and solutions.
BioDesign Team
Taking advantage of the digital transformation of biology to develop of workflows and tools that greatly reduce the time and resource requirements for big data analysis and the development of new biotechnological solutions to sustainability issues.
Prime Activities
Designing and implementing bio-based solutions required by Australia to move to a new generation of sovereign sustainability in waste processing, resource recovery, sustainable consumption and nature based novel production systems.